Forum:Active featuring
__TOC__ Original post Sifting through the Senate forum, I've noticed there has, in the past, been several proposals to "feature" or "rate" articles. Currently, I see no evidence of it and I can assume that all of these proposals died because of the lack of continuous support. There are a handful active contributors and countless of good articles that have been created since the last proposal. In addition, somewhat tying to this revived interest of featuring articles, I feel that the Main Page is not only dead but horribly outdated. Looking at the code of the feature page, there are several articles that are listed but has remained untouched for over a year already. That and it seems to not work with me so the page that is always featured is Woogers' Ivalice nation page. I think that fresher and newer projects deserve a chance to be featured along these classic pages. On Wikipedia, there is a system that rates article. Just like Wikipedia, I am entirely aware of this wiki's frightening history and problem with stubs and poorly written articles. I think the rating system really should only award articles/projects of outstanding quality (and those that are their way towards it) instead of attempting to systematically rate every single article on this wiki. Some form of rating would be nice and there could be a list that compiles all of the wiki's finest content to allow visitors to sift through the good stuff, not the 200 byte pages :p Any thoughts on this? How we would choose and rate featured articles? I would love to see this wiki coming together as community and more expressively voicing their opinions on each others' works. What is the point of writing articles if you do not have feedback from your fellow contributors? Signed, an Optimistic Member [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 00:31, September 17, 2014 (UTC) Response I believe this died out because we were generally dependent on Woogers' wiki editing (templates generally) skills. When he left, any real chance of a template system left with him. I personally love the idea of bringing this back. I think we can simply just all list some articles we'd like to see on the Main Page, and have it cycle between them (if the cycle error can be fixed). Do you think you'll be able to implement some of this? -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 15:50, September 17, 2014 (UTC) :Unfortunately, my knowledge on template syntax is fairly limited and a lot of the templates I create rely on are honestly, copypasta from Wikipedia. The bad thing about Wikipedia, or should I say, Wikia is that the MediaWiki software here cannot interpret "magic words" like #invoke from the program which are used extensively on many Wikipedia templates. Thus, this wiki can't perform a lot of the advanced templates that we need for some features with this in mind. Woogers obviously had extensive knowledge to circumnavigate this. :For featured articles, if we can't fix the cycling problem, I think the featured article should be manually updated weekly (I don't think this wiki is not active enough to satisfy daily updates) from a preexisting, separate list of "approved" featured articles. Maybe while we're at it, have featured images, lists, and whatnot. Of course, before all of that can happen, the first line in order is voting on what articles should be part of the featured roster. From there, (and as the list grows), we can choose which particular article should be featured that week. :I also notice the lack of a true manual of style (MoS). I know we have several "help" articles ( for example) but there doesn't seem to be an explicit guidelines pertaining to style, spelling, grammar, and syntax. That I believe, is a problem and ought to be addressed alongside the featured articles. Perhaps, the criteria for a featured article would set an example for other articles (and thus be the de facto MoS?) :At any case, I'd be happy to participate in any way to form or lead the effort to implement and work on these features/policies. I understand that these are generally the work of administrators but I feel that this should be a community-wide effort even though in all respects, it seems to be dead. All in all, we need some sort of standardization to distinguish the great articles/projects from the vast majority of dead-end stubs of death. Coming from the Cyber Nations Wikia, the community there had their own set of guidelines found here. It is my hope that this wiki will not simply be a graveyard of only-once-edited stubs and redundant articles about arbitrary things but a living community of conworlders who are passionate about sharing their works be it fantasy, realistic, medieval, etc. Just my thoughts. [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 18:10, September 17, 2014 (UTC) I encourage you to take a proactive role. We admins are generally just here to ensure order and guard against breaking the rules. We've always had a small active population so we never really saw a point in expanding the bureaucracy or enlarging our mandate. I guess the manual updating can work but unfortunately I can see that too being easily dropped. I believe therefore that finding a working cycle template would be quite ideal. Voting will also prove an issue since we're only like 3 or 4 people who would bother to vote. We'll likely tie or have substandard turnout. Perhaps list the articles you'd think should go up, and we'll discuss them. I don't see an issue, at this point in time, with just putting up good articles. Democracy can wait, as far as I am concerned! :X About the guides: I've always considered writing some of my own guides but as it stands I already don't really have the time to commit to more things. You're free to work on some guides if you wish! Lastly, I don't believe Conworlds will ever be able to die. The vast amount of content we already have will always attract some people. What I think may improve our reputation is if we go into some or other cooperative agreement with other fiction wikis to direct people with non-relevant articles to the other wiki. I know, for example, a lot of Alternative History conworlds on that wiki aren't at all focused on "alternative history". Even here, we have many media related articles, which may fit more relevantly on a wiki dealing with "fictional media" (one was marketed around here a while back, but I lost the link). This my encourage some form of dynamism, or may have intended consequences, like driving people away to other wikis permanently. -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 18:42, September 17, 2014 (UTC) :You raise an excellent point on that and the Constructed Worlds Wiki is exactly what it is: a wiki on constructed worlds. Indeed, I believe this wiki will continue to exist (and hopefully thrive) for years to come. One way to cycle through articles would be the purge which basically refreshes and loads a new random article/image listed in the coding of the main page. From there, there would be a link which would direct readers to a complete comprehensive list of all the featured articles. Not to be self-promoting, but I would nominate my own page, the Kingdom of Sierra as one of the "new" featured articles. I will compile a list of what should be featured and if anyone has any objections, voice in (though as you said, democracy can wait :v). :I'm cool with creating some guides. I have copy-edited my school newspaper for 2 years (now as an editor-in-chief) and I'm quite familiar with the "encyclopedia" style that wikis emulate. Generally, I am pretty sure any community would agree to common sense policies and guidelines. Granted, these policies cannot be enforced effectively (reading through many users' talk pages, I have seen how nearly all attempts to enforce policies have always blown up) but as I have stated before, if anyone hopes to become featured, they ought to follow the guidelines. With 11,000 pages and countless of uploaded files, it would take a lot of people working together and time to clean up this wiki. I'll set up some pages under my namespace and then, if everyone (more like, if anyone objects explicitly in this discussion) is fine with it, I guess it'll become an official guide under the CW namespace. :TL;DR, I nominate the Kingdom of Sierra to be one of the many articles that should/will be featured and I'll go ahead with creating some guides and pages for the wiki. [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 23:09, September 17, 2014 (UTC) Nah, it's fine. I'd also nominate Sierra - it's by far one of the better articles to come about in the last few months. I've always had some objections to enforcing quality standards simply because I have a liberal interpretation of the concept "conworld". I believe that forcing users to do certain things may stifle creativity to a large extent and perhaps dissuade users from at least trying to start a project. With our already low numbers, I don't think we should create a strict system of quality standards. I am open to convincing, though. -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 18:31, September 18, 2014 (UTC) Proposed featured article list My proposal on what should be featured. These are articles I could name nearly instantaneously that are clean, well-written, rich in content, and completed. Granted, my own article still has the construction template, but it is virtually complete. The second largest article on the wiki (with 170,000+ bytes) according to , I think I should just call it virtually complete. It's sad because only 500~ out of the 11,000 articles we have, have more than 14,000 bytes which is pretty depressing... [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 23:29, September 17, 2014 (UTC) :Edit: Obviously, the number of bytes don't necessarily correlate with quality but the point stands. It's a frightening thought to know that the overwhelming majority of articles truly are stubs and uncompleted articles (I know I got some that I will be needing to work on). [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 23:32, September 17, 2014 (UTC) Your list seems good. I think Ivalice, the Kingdom of Texas and Everett should stay on the list for now, though. Out of your suggested list, I favor Sierra, Westland, Kania and Yarpei. -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 18:31, September 18, 2014 (UTC) :LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! I have done it. I have created a functioning cycling template that will load all the current featured articles. I will begin adding the ones suggested by me and agreed upon by Super Warmonkey. All submissions are of course subject to change--if you have concerns, voice it! [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 03:55, September 19, 2014 (UTC) ::Nice to know. I tried to give it a swing and fix that stupid temple Woogers made, but I could only change the featured article every once and a while manually. Nice to see that it was finally handled by someone a bit more capable than I. Also, I agree with Super on the suggested articles to be added to the new list. Though I would like to see the Xai up there as well, but that is more of a personal opinion to say the least. Aside from that, nations such as Kalibara, Lapland, and Eastern Sahara should be removed as they aren't finished or average articles. Vivaporius: "I don't need a slogan" 15:15, September 20, 2014 (UTC) For me it's been just showing the ASA. I believe Woogers said it isn't only server side, so it may be something to do with my client. Good job nonetheless! -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 15:25, September 20, 2014 (UTC) :Later today when I am free, I will continue working on this. SWM, if you reload the page, it loads the same page for some reason. You have to manually click on the purge hyperlink at the bottom of the main page to re-seed the articles. If you have or will try it, and it keeps on loading ASA after multiple tries, then indeed it may be your client. [[User:JustinVuong| ]] 15:34, September 20, 2014 (UTC) Ah, that works. Thanks! -Signed by Warmonkey (talk • ) 15:44, September 20, 2014 (UTC)